A prosecution expert challenged a central piece of Lindsay Clancy’s defense Monday, testifying that he did not believe she was experiencing acute psychosis with command hallucinations when she killed her three children in January 2023.
According to reporting adapted from the Associated Press, forensic psychologist Kirk Heilbrun testified that Clancy’s description of hearing a voice telling her to “kill the children so you can kill yourself” did not fit what he would expect from that kind of psychotic episode.
“The way she described this as happening is that she heard a voice that she’d never heard before, experienced a hallucination and she’s never experienced it since. But she only experienced it for the 18 minutes or so that it took to kill the children,” Heilbrun testified. “To put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation of how this kind of thing comes about. Very unusual.”
Mental Health Is the Trial’s Core Fight
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of her children, Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged in age from 8 months to 5 years old.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that Clancy killed the children. His argument is that she should not be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare condition associated with childbirth, stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes.
Prosecutors argue Clancy was mentally ill but still knew right from wrong. They have alleged that she planned the killings and got her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of the children and dinner for the family.
Prosecution Expert Describes a Different Theory
Heilbrun testified that he concluded Clancy killed the children because she wanted to die by suicide but did not want to leave them behind.
He said that when he asked Clancy what happened, she described telling each child, “Go to God, baby. Go to God,” as she strangled them. Heilbrun testified that this reflected an expectation that she and the children would be together in heaven with God.
After killing the children, Clancy jumped from a second-floor window. She remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Heilbrun also referenced Clancy’s Catholic faith during testimony, prompting Reddington to request a mistrial. Judge William Sullivan denied the request, but later told jurors to disregard the reference to “the religion that the defendant was raised with,” calling it “an absolutely inappropriate area of testimony.”
Experts Split Over Diagnosis and Responsibility
Heilbrun is among prosecution witnesses who have testified that Clancy was mentally ill but not legally excused from criminal responsibility.
On Friday, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack testified that he found no evidence of mania or hypomania to support a bipolar diagnosis, and no evidence of psychosis leading up to the killings. Mack said Clancy was experiencing severe mental illness, but described it as a continuation of depression she had experienced for months while still being able to control impulses and understand right from wrong.
Heilbrun reached a different diagnostic conclusion on one point, testifying that he determined Clancy has bipolar 2 disorder. He said the diagnosis was difficult in part because of multiple diagnoses in her records and the range of symptoms she had reported. People with bipolar 2 disorder experience cycles of depression and hypomania, which is less intense than the mania associated with bipolar 1 disorder.
Earlier in the trial, jurors heard that Clancy sought mental health treatment from multiple providers and had admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital.
Defense Witnesses Said She Was Psychotic
The defense has presented experts who reached sharply different conclusions.
Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist and expert in filicide, testified Friday that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” on the day she killed her children and was not in control of her actions.
“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” Resnick testified.
Another defense witness, psychologist Paul Zeizel, concluded that Clancy “had no appreciation for the wrongfulness of her act.”
